Year after promise, no cameras in Albany police cars

I hope you weren’t counting on a video recording to provide a clear shot of the Aug. 15 collision between an Albany police cruiser and a car that left a passenger dead.

More than a year after Albany Police Chief James Tuffey promised video cameras would be installed in nearly 50 patrols cars, the department is disclosing technological issues continue to prevent that from becoming reality.

Senior writer Brendan J. Lyons reports today:

A new patrol car involved in a fatal crash last week was not equipped with a digital video camera, which might have provided investigators with critical information as they seek to recreate an officer’s collision with a civilian vehicle.

Chief James W. Tuffey pledged publicly more than a year ago that the installation of cameras in at least 47 patrol cars was imminent and that he had obtained government grants to pay for the work.

But Anthony Bruno, an assistant chief in charge of the effort to equip the cars with cameras and global-positioning satellites, said technical issues have delayed the project.

As it stands, Bruno said Friday, no cars currently are equipped with functioning cameras and just eight cars have working GPS systems.

”Unfortunately for us, in this, we are in uncharted water,” Bruno said.

On Aug. 14, a patrol car racing to an emergency call at a detox facility slammed broadside into a small sedan driven by an Albany woman, Melissa Escobar, 22. Her passenger, Jamar McGill, 21, was killed from the impact.

Escobar told the Times Union this week that she had a green light and did not hear a siren coming from the patrol car of Officer Christopher Orth, whose emergency lights were flashing, according to police and witnesses.

Several city police officers interviewed for this report said they are trained to ”clear” an intersection when they are responding to an emergency with lights flashing, or, engaged in a high-speed pursuit. That training requires they slow down and make certain that no vehicles or people, including pedestrians or bicyclists, are in their path, the officers said.

Likewise, state law requires drivers to yield to emergency vehicles that have lights flashing, whether or not a siren is engaged.

7 Responses

I can understand the delay due to technical difficulties. The same system that has been used by thousands of other police forces is not good enough for the albany police cars. They choose to swim in uncharted waters. Im wondering if they want breathalizers built into the units?

I’m alright with the delay if the end result is a system that’s superior to those currently available, but it’s disappointing that it’s not in place a year after it was promised! Like Due2, I understand technical delays, but you’d think the issues they experienced could have been avoided had they researched the cameras ahead of time, or sought out input from other police forces. Maybe they did, but I can’t imagine a camera that drained the battery in one car wouldn’t do the same thing in another.

I wonder how many police forces in the area also lack cameras in their cars. I was shocked to find out APD didn’t.

For a Mayor who recently bragged to Metroland that he has made every one of our Police Department’s patrol vehicles “a crime lab on wheels” this unacceptable situation is, as Eric Cartman would say, “lame”.

Ummm…. Technical issues? I think what he means, technically speaking, is “We don’t want to do it”. There is no new state-of-the-art technology here, unless you want a system that turns off when it sees a PBA Bullseye sticker.